


Letters Home

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 19:50:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For whitmans_kiss, to her prompt: Ralph finds that he has got postage stamps, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters Home

The post arrived mid-morning. Laurie, still smarting from Alec’s blistering lecture, and more than a little hurt—it was impossible to admit how much; he had not thought himself so terrible at judging a man’s true worth—by Lanyon’s cavalier behaviour, stuck the letter to the bottom of the pile.   
  
There was a long letter from his mother, just back from her honeymoon, that bit into his mind and could only be borne paragraph by slow, painstaking paragraph. By the time he’d composed himself enough to take in the meaning in its entirety, rather than in fragments and wandering phrases, it was very nearly time for lunch.  
  
Mervyn, turning peevish with the return of good health and chafing at continued inactivity, demanded a story about the army, and then about his last hospital, and finally growing familiar and drowsy, about school. Laurie, frustrated by his own immediate desire to make it a story about Lanyon—so many of his stories were about Lanyon, as his mother had so excruciatingly pointed out—had embarked instead upon a winding story about being caught out of bounds while still at his prep school, and all the ridiculous punishments the teacher had dreamt up. He was painfully conscious that a better storyteller wouldn’t have made such a botch of the thing, but Mervyn did need his sleep, for all it would make him jittery at night.  
  
He’d half-forgotten the letter, or so he tried to convince himself even as he reached for it the moment he climbed back into bed. It had been posted only the last evening, likely while he’d been hammering on Ralph’s door.


End file.
